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Abraxos listened and was surprised to hear her give instructions like keep your shoulders down. Breathe from your gut. And don't fight the pull. Let it move through you instead of clamping down on it. An hour crawled by slowly, the way time tended to when nothing was going right. The sun slid a good deal higher behind the hedges while Sarah struggled.

"Touch her mid-casting, and you'll both be decorating this courtyard. You’re going to have to sit down, angel," Amelia barked as she kept her attention fixed entirely on the woman in front of her.

Both palms were extended toward Sarah, and a thread of power stretched taut between the two of them like a wire pulled to its breaking point. Gold was pouring off Amelia. A deep bruise-violet joined it from Sarah's side. The fountain behind them reflected the color. Abraxos had considered draining it so the water wouldn't carry the charge and turn the whole courtyard into a conductor, but Amelia was keeping Sarah’s power from straying too far.

"She's bleeding from the nose again." Abraxos let the growl sit in his voice instead of sanding it down for anyone's comfort. "That's twice in an hour."

"Because she's learning. Wielding this much power isn’t easy." Amelia thrust her hands on her hips. "You want to help in another way?”

“What do you think?” Abraxos demanded.

“I think you would die for her, but that’s not something you’re ready to talk about,” Amelia replied with a wave of her hand. “Be a wall she can throw the magic at. Otherwise, go stand by the wisteria and brood where we don't have to hear you."

Sarah barked out a cracked, surprised sound that was as close to laughter as she could get at the moment. She rolled her sleeves to the elbow, highlighting the brand on her palm. It had turned to silver overnight. The instant she reached for the power, it woke. Green began climbing one arm and then the other. The two streams met at her sternum and twisted. It lifted the hair along Abraxos's forearms from thirty feet off.

She caught the thread Amelia threw her and held on. Her whole body shook with the effort. Abraxos almost intervened, but then the grass under her bare feet whitened with frost in a ring two feet across.

"Good job." Amelia let the thread go slack, watching Sarah with the sharp, assessing eye of a witch who understood what this level of magical expenditure would do to a person. "Now you need to release the power. Gently. Don't drop it like you did the⁠—"

Sarah dropped it before Amelia finished instructing her. The frost ring cracked, and a pulse of cold slapped Abraxos in the chest from twenty feet away. His wings snapped out before his brain caught up. Every instinct in his body was screaming the same command. He was headed in her direction before he remembered standing.

"Sit down, angel." Amelia's voice cut across the courtyard like a blade drawn from a sheath. "She's fine. You launching across the lawn every time her magic hiccups is going to get her killed faster than the Titans will. You don’t want her to spend every fight watching to see if you've lost your mind."

That stopped him in his tracks. “You expect a warrior angel to watch the female they... it’s difficult to stand by and not help her.” He’d caught himself from saying more than he wanted and looked over to check on his Guardian.

Sarah was bent double with her hands on her knees, sucking in air. Her dark hair was stuck to her temples with sweat. The blood smeared on her lip didn’t help his control. ‘Look at her.’

Following the advice from his inner voice, he noted she was still vertical. She was breathless, furious, and wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist. "He means well," she managed between breaths, tossing Abraxos a look that was half apology, half warning. God, the female made him want to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his bed.

"Males like him can't help it when their females are at risk." Amelia pressed a water bottle into her hand. "Drink that. You’ll need some food too. You burned through more energy in twenty minutes than I did in my first month. You’re extremely powerful. Your body's furnace is on high right now, and you keep forgetting to feed it."

Abraxos forced himself to remain where he’d frozen. He was trying not to hover over Sarah and failing. She wouldn’t respond well to an overbearing alpha male. Staying there was the hardest thing he'd done in centuries.

"Okay. Let’s go again," Sarah pushed as she squared her shoulders like the blood on her chin was an inconvenience and not a warning sign.

"No." Amelia capped the bottle with a decisive twist. "You're done for today. Push past this, and you're not learning anymore. You're a breath away from hemorrhaging. I'm not explaining to Camael why his Guardian stroked out doing parlor tricks on my watch."

The garden wall lit before Sarah could argue. Abraxos went on alert and closed the distance between them. Two bodies were coming over fast. They were already running when their feet hit the grass. He'd conjured his blade a second later.

His shoulders dropped marginally when he recognized them, but he didn’t store his weapon. They could be running from demons. Or Lucifer himself. Izzy crossed the lawn at a flat sprint with Donovan a half-step behind her. He had his daggers out of their sheaths.

"Tell me you've got good news," Abraxos called, even though the set of Donovan's shoulders had already answered him.

"Oh, I've got news. Good is a stretch." Izzy's blue eyes swept the courtyard and ran over Abraxos, Sarah, Amelia, and the melting frost ring. She recorded all of it in half a second, same as her father would have. "Remember that key Lucifer's supposedly hunting for? Turns out he didn't need to find one. A Titan just let itself out.”

“We don't think it’s completely free, but enough,” Donovan added.

"Out where?" Abraxos barked as he held his temper together. His mind raced in a million different directions, starting with the need to protect Sarah.

"Six blocks away from this perfectly manicured garden." Donovan’s voice was worn thin. "In Lafayette Cemetery. The ground opened between two family tombs forty minutes ago. Something the size of a delivery truck started climbing out of it. Micah's holding the perimeter, so no drunk tourist live-streams the end of the world."

“It might be fun to add mundane paranormal junkies to the mix,” Sarah quipped before shaking her head. “One of the actual Titans? Wasn’t it a hound or a scout? I can look through the things in my grandmother's grimoire so we know how to fight it."

Izzy's grin was gone, turning Abraxos's blood to slush, because she grinned through everything. "I put three feet of blade in it on the way out. It looked at me like I'd thrown a dinner roll."

"How big was it?" Sarah demanded. She impressed him with how steady she was despite what Amelia had wrung out of her.

Abraxos was already moving. "Amelia, I need eyes off that cemetery. Cover us."